The New Yorker Magazine (№ 5th April 2021) by David Remnick (Editor In Chief)

Author:David Remnick (Editor In Chief) [Remnick, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: culture, politics, art, jounalism, magazine, non-fiction
Publisher: Conde Nast
Published: 2021-04-04T14:00:00+00:00

COMIC STRIP BY EMILY FLAKE

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 5, 2021

37

later?,’ she said, ‘I honestly thought they

would be better off without me.’” She

told her brothers, “Mom could have

had that thinking.”

David recalled a memory of their

mother standing at the top of the stairs

in a slip when their father came home

from work. “Dad yelled at her,” David

said. “He said, ‘How can you run around

the house naked in front of the chil-

dren?’ And she cried and ran back into

the bedroom.”

“Oh, wow,” Loftus said. “I never knew

you had that.” She had a poorer mem-

ory of childhood than her brothers, and

she treated their memories as posses-

sions they’d been gifted unfairly.

“We ended up with a few extra flying buttresses,

Robert, who was now barely visible

so we buttressed some other stuff.”

in the darkness, recalled that Debbi’s

father, Harrold, a former marine, had a

den where he kept all his parapherna-

•

•

lia from both World Wars. “It’s plausi-

ble that Mom would be rummaging

journal, and he was curious about the know where I got that. I have no idea.”

around in there, and maybe Harrold had

entry she had written the night before

“If Debbi is sure it is suicide,” Rob-

a sidearm in a holster that was draped

their mother’s death. “Should I read it?” ert said, “it might be that some people over one of his uniform jackets, and this he asked.

come into their experience of mental could have been what set the stage for Loftus, who hadn’t read the journal illness with a baseline rigidity. They can’t this alleged event,” he said. “I don’t buy for years, nodded.

relate to mental illness and see these the fact that she attempted suicide with

“My mother and I had a long talk people as extraterrestrial.”

one of Harrold’s sidearms.”

until midnight all about her childhood

Robert’s son, Abe, who has had psy-

David was building a fire, and we

and many other things,” he read. “I was chiatric treatment, suddenly chimed in: could see only his legs. He came back to really happy because we’d never been “The first question they ask is ‘Have the screen and said, “Well, the interest-too close before, and now we were talking you had any suicidal thoughts?’ They ing thing is I had this idea, which I never like we really were.”

shame you right off the bat. The min-

really evaluated, that Dad had thought

David looked up from the page he ute you get in their office. How can you it was suicide and Mom’s family thought was reading. “Beth, are you crying?” he answer something like that? And then it was some accidental thing. But I think said, tenderly.

they say you’re depressed because you everybody knew it was suicide.”

She was. “It’s O.K.,” she said, nod-

can’t answer it correctly. That’s just me,

“Nope,” Loftus said. “Not everybody.”

ding quickly and pursing her lips. She though—sorry.”

“I’m getting more comfortable with

had never paid close attention to the

“No, it’s O.K.,” Loftus said. “Abe, is the idea of accidental suicide,” David time line. “But, if I really was with her this weird for you?”

said.

until midnight the night before,” she

Abe said that he didn’t realize he

“Why?” Loftus said.

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